From Well you know her as my daughter. We call her the queue, so she has plausible deniability and joining her now her criminal justice teacher Richard Vaccaro, to talk about a fundraiser that is going to let kids go and compete.
Guys, welcome to the show.
Thank thanks for having much.
Well, I want to start with you, mister vccaro. Specifically, you guys are raising money and we're going to talk about the raffle on how somebody can win a night in a suite at the Rockies game with me. But first I want to talk about Skills USA. Tell me a little bit about this competition and what the students get to do.
Well, it's the national organization that encourages competition and criminal justice related events, including crime scene investigations, police procedures, and along with criminal justice events, they cover other trades and occupations from carpentry to all sorts of vocational avenues. So that is a nutshell what Skills usay is about.
So what do the kids actually do at these competitions. I mean, you drag out a dead body and splattered bread all over the place and they've got to solve the crime.
What does this actually look like?
Yeah, they have to utilize techniques they have they learned in class and learn from people in the field such as crime scene investigators that we have connections with. So they have to be proficient and all the skills and demonstrate that in a pretty highly competitive event. For example, we're going to the conference in pebol the state conference next week, and they'll be you know, probably fifty other schools that will be competing against from the state.
So about how many students in your high school, legend high school are going to go compete?
Well, we have a small but mighty group. We have eight students that are going to compete. There'll be two sets of crime scene student led teams, and then two students will be doing police procedures. So we're small, but it's important to them and they did pretty well last year, so I'm proud of them.
Now, Q, you are in the Criminal Justice Club. What exactly do you guys do?
We have been focusing more on like educating people on what criminal justice is as well as last year we started a fundraiser for the Colorado Crisis Center to help raise money for them for their victims. We've finished that up a few months ago.
I'm blanking on like what date, but it was a few months ago, like before the first semester ended.
Why do you like Criminal Justice Club?
I think that we have like a very valuable idea that we're trying to like support when it comes to just all of the topics that we've come up with, because like the crisis Center wasn't the first idea we had for a fundraiser, and there were just a lot of people that had like a lot of ideas for what we wanted to do. And it's just a group of people that value being able to help out their
community in such a way. And I just really like that there's so many of us that can do that, all right, a few of us, honestly, So.
Tell the listeners what you're raffling off to raise money to send kids to the Skills USA competition.
We are raffling off ten tickets in Koa's stadium suite for a baseball game in July July. First baseball game July first. I don't remember who it is against right now, that matters.
No one cares, No one cares, No one cares at all, but I because it is a hosted suite, and Chuck and I are handling like the food and stuff.
I will be in the suite as well.
And every bit of the money that is sold in the form of tickets is going to go to support these kids going to Skills USA. So we're not taking anything. We're providing the food. I do want to be clear for my listeners this is a you have to buy your own booz situation because this is a school fundraiser. We are not providing alcohol, so I want to make that very very clear for the July first game. Now, mister Vacaro, how long have you guys been doing the Skills USA competitions.
Well, I started working at Legend High School three years ago and created the club after gaining some interest from students. So they were doing it previously, maybe a few years, but since I've been on board, I've been doing it for two years. I had to get my feet wet, get used to it, and then develop, you know, people
to help train the kids. I'm a retired Federal Approbation and pro officer, so I have certain skills and I bring others in that can teach crime scene policing area that I have some knowledge of and not full expertise. So we bring in people who have the full knowledge of these kids can learn the right way and compete to their best ability.
So how many kids have gone on and gone into criminal justice careers?
Are moved in that direction that you're aware of? I mean, are are you.
Guys able to help kids realize this is a field that they would like to enter.
Yeah, that's a big focus of the program. We have internal in house career fairs each October. I have incorporated where agents from like federal agencies, local agencies, state agencies come meet with the kids and share opportunities available to them. I've had many students going to the Explorer programs with Parker PD and Douglas County Sheriff's Office. And I even have my first success story. I was a student who
went through the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. They have a program where you can be a correction officer specialists helping out the guards in the jail and then get your feet wet and then get on to be a full fledged peace officer. So he's working on that. So that's my proudest moment as a teacher. And I see people who are interested getting into their pathway.
Oh no, I think that's fantastic, and I know that Q has enjoyed the club overall and has this expressed a desire to work in that field in the future.
I want to let people know.
I put a link today on the blog for the tickets, and they're on a site called Zeffi and it is a can people. If you go to zepi dot com, ze f f y dot com and search Legend High School Criminal Justice Club, this will come up. Or you can just go to the blog and Mandy's blog dot com. How much your tickets? Q?
What do people get?
Each ticket separately is twenty dollars and then for one hundred dollars you can get six tickets and also a T shirt. I've been looking at this for twenty minutes and for some reason I can't remember if that's right or not.
No, there's no, sir, there's no T shirt. Don't give away t shirts. I don't want to have to do that. You can also add a donation for the Legend High School Criminal Justice Club as well.
If you'd like to support these kids.
Yes, if you'd like to support these kids in their mission to go to Skills USA. Okay, guys, I appreciate the time today, Hopefully we sell a lot of tickets and hopefully not a jerk wins because I got to hang out with them the whole time in the suite, So let's hope that nice people win. When will we be choosing the winner on this by the way, we.
Will be choosing a winner on May fifteenth, two thirty.
Okay, and we will contact you via email if you win. That's how we're doing that, all right.
And can I just add my appreciation for Q. She is involved in theater and other things, and she has put a lot of time into this project to help her fellow students, so a lot of maturity, a lot of selflessness. She has been pivotal of that. So I am so proud of her because you know, when kids are involved in different things, it gets expensive, and she's looking out for a fellow student. So that's admirable at her age for sure.
Gosh, thanks for that. Thanks for that, Richard Viccaro. That just made this mom very very proud. I'm not surprised, mind you, because she's a pretty awesome kid, but it's always nice to hear from someone else that your kid is pretty awesome. So thank you so much for that.
Well, thank you very much, everybody all.
Right, guys, thank you for being on the show and we'll talk to you again soon.
Thank you.